Consents vs Work Put in Place
Building consents are approvals to build; work put in place is what’s actually being built right now. The gap between them shows whether the sector is burning through its pipeline or building one up.
Consents (pipeline) vs Work Put in Place (activity) — quarterly, $NZ millions
Consents are the leading indicator; work put in place follows roughly two quarters behind as approved projects move from paper to site.
Trailing-12-month totals — smoothed view
Rolling annual totals remove quarterly noise. Note how the 2022-23 peak in consents preceded the 2023 peak in work put in place by three quarters.
What the two lines together tell you
Consents issued and work put in place are the two halves of the building sector story. Consents are permission to build; they are a leading indicator of future construction activity because projects with a consent are either already on site or on their way there. Work put in place measures the dollar value of construction that actually happened in the quarter — excavations, foundations, framing, fit-out, everything up to completion. It is a coincident indicator of what the sector is doing right now.
When consents are rising faster than work in place, the sector is building up a backlog: more projects are being approved than can be started. This was the situation through 2021 and most of 2022. When consents fall faster than work in place, as happened through 2023 and 2024, the sector is burning through its backlog. A leading indicator is collapsing while activity is still running off the stored pipeline. That is why the 2023 collapse in consents did not show up as a collapse in activity until 2024.
Why the gap between them matters for businesses
For building-product suppliers and subcontractors, consents tell you what work is coming. For labour planners, builders, and anyone tracking sector capacity, work put in place tells you what is happening right now. The ratio between the two is a rough measure of how long the pipeline is: at the peak in 2022, the trailing-12-month consents value was around 70 per cent of the trailing-12-month work-in-place value, meaning the sector had about 8-9 months of forward work lined up. Today that ratio has dropped — the pipeline is thinner, which typically signals more capacity is coming free and competition for remaining work will intensify.
Related trackers
Compare alongside: Building input cost tracker (PPI, CGPI, LCI indices) and Construction sector jobs tracker (employment + wages). Return to the main Building Consents dashboard.